50 Fun Facts About Pancake

What leavening agent gives American and Scottish pancakes their thick, fluffy texture?

Baking powder is the usual raising agent in American and Scottish pancake batter; French crêpes skip it, which is why they come out thin enough to roll.

Which of these is NOT another name for a pancake in North America?

A popover is a puffed egg batter baked in a hot tin, closer to a Yorkshire pudding; the other three are all pancakes.

A 'silver dollar' pancake is about how big across?

2 to 3 inches: a silver dollar pancake is a small round of about 3 inches, a bit bigger than the US silver dollar coins minted before 1979.

Historically, why were pancakes made on Shrove Tuesday?

"To use up fat and eggs before Lent": rich foods were given up for the fast, so households cooked them into pancakes; the French name Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday can fall on any date within which range?

3 February to 9 March: Shrove Tuesday falls 47 days before Easter, which itself ranges from 22 March to 25 April, so the pancake day moves with the moon.

The famous pancake race in Olney, England, is said to have begun in which year?

1445 is the traditional date: legend says an Olney housewife heard the shriving bell and ran to church clutching her frying pan.

Since 1950, Olney has raced its Shrove Tuesday pancake race against a town in which US state?

Kansas: the town of Liberal has run its race against Olney since 1950, with times compared across the Atlantic; runners must flip their pancake at the start and finish.

Ancient Greek tagenites (pancakes) used wheat flour, olive oil, curdled milk and which sweetener?

Honey sweetened tagenites, the Greek pancakes of wheat flour, olive oil and curdled milk served for breakfast over two thousand years ago; the name comes from tagenon, a frying pan.

The word crêpe comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Curled: crêpe comes via Old French from the Latin crispus, meaning curled or wavy, the same root that gives English 'crisp'.

In France, crêpes are traditionally eaten on La Chandeleur, or Candlemas, which falls on which date?

2 February is Candlemas, forty days after Christmas; French custom says to flip the Chandeleur crêpe while holding a gold coin in the other hand for a year of good fortune.

A galette bretonne, the savoury pancake of Brittany, is made from which flour?

Buckwheat flour, called blé noir or sarrasin in Brittany, gives the galette its dark colour and makes the batter naturally gluten-free; the classic filling is ham, cheese and an egg.

Which drink is the traditional partner for galettes in a Breton crêperie?

Cider is the classic partner: Breton crêperies serve dry cidre in a bolée, a handleless bowl, alongside savoury galettes.

Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?

Orange: the sauce is caramelised butter, sugar and orange juice with an orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier; waiter Henri Charpentier claimed to have invented it by accident in Monte Carlo in 1895.

Russian blini are traditionally eaten in the week before Lent, known as what?

Maslenitsa, from maslo, butter, is the week of feasting before Orthodox Lent; its round golden blini are said to stand for the returning sun.

Blini differ from crêpes mainly because their batter contains what?

Yeast: traditional blini are raised with a yeasted batter, making them thicker and spongier than an unleavened crêpe; they are often topped with sour cream and caviar.

Dutch pannenkoeken are typically about how wide?

30 cm (12 in) is the usual width: pannenkoeken are larger and a little thicker than crêpes, eaten with bacon and stroop syrup or with apple and cinnamon.

Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?

A dimpled pan, the cast-iron poffertjespan, gives them their small puffed shape; they are served hot with butter and powdered sugar at fairs and markets.

The Japanese savoury pancake okonomiyaki takes its name from words meaning what?

'How you like it' and 'grilled': okonomi means 'as you like' and yaki means grilled, fitting a dish whose batter takes whatever fillings the cook prefers.

What is the main vegetable in okonomiyaki?

Cabbage, finely shredded, is the bulk of an okonomiyaki; Osaka-style mixes it into the batter while Hiroshima-style layers it on top of a thin crêpe base.

Japanese dorayaki are two small pancakes sandwiched around what filling?

Sweet red bean paste, called anko, fills the two castella-style pancakes; dorayaki are famously the favourite food of the robot cat Doraemon.

Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?

Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is fermented into the sour batter; injera doubles as plate and spoon, with stews ladled onto it and torn pieces used to scoop them up.

A South Indian dosa is made from a fermented batter of rice and which pulse?

Black gram, the pulse sold as urad dal, is soaked and ground with rice to make the fermented batter; a masala dosa is folded around spiced potatoes with sambar and coconut chutney.

Jianbing, China's popular street breakfast, is a crêpe topped with an egg and what crispy element?

A fried cracker, the crisp wafer called baocui, is folded inside the egg-topped crêpe with sweet bean and chilli sauces; Tianjin's jianbing guozi wraps a fried dough stick instead.

Hungarian palacsinta gets its name, via Romanian, from which Latin word?

Placenta was Latin for a flat cake; the word passed into Romanian as plăcintă and then into Hungarian; the Gundel palacsinta version is filled with walnuts and doused in chocolate sauce.

The shredded caramelised pancake of Austria is named after which ruler?

Emperor Franz Joseph I gives the dish its name; legend says his wife Elisabeth refused the rich dessert and the emperor finished her portion himself.

In Sweden, pancakes are traditionally eaten for lunch on which day of the week, after pea soup?

The habit is said to date from Catholic times, when Friday was a fast day and Thursday the last chance for a filling meal.

Toutons, small pancakes fried in pork fat and served with molasses, come from which place?

Newfoundland is home to toutons: rounds of leftover bread dough fried in pork fat and eaten with molasses, a breakfast that began in the island's fishing outports.

South African pannekoek are traditionally served with what?

Cinnamon sugar and lemon is the classic topping: the thin pannekoek is sprinkled, squeezed with lemon and rolled up, a fixture of church fetes and rainy days.

In Australia and New Zealand, small thick pancakes about the size of a coaster are known as what?

Pikelets are the Australian and New Zealand name for small thick pancakes that the British call drop scones or Scotch pancakes.

A Dutch baby pancake differs from an ordinary pancake in that it is what?

"Baked in the oven" in a hot cast-iron pan, the eggy batter puffs dramatically and collapses within minutes; the name was coined at Manca's Café in Seattle in the early 1900s.

The 'Dutch' in Dutch baby pancake is thought to be a corruption of which word?

The dish is essentially a German pancake, and one of Victor Manca's daughters is credited with the mangled name.

A johnnycake, also called a hoecake, is a flatbread made from what?

Cornmeal is the base: johnnycakes are a cornmeal flatbread that New England colonists learned from Native Americans, and they remain a Rhode Island speciality.

Which brand, launched in 1889, is described as the first ready-mix pancake flour?

Aunt Jemima pancake mix was created in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1889 by Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood as a self-rising flour; Quaker Oats owned the brand from 1926.

Nancy Green cooked pancakes as the living face of a brand at which 1893 event?

Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was where Nancy Green, born into slavery in Kentucky, first cooked pancakes in character; several Black women followed her in the role over the next century.

In 2021 the pancake-mix brand long fronted by a stereotyped Black cook was renamed what?

Pearl Milling Company was the St. Joseph, Missouri mill that produced the original 1889 mix; Quaker Oats revived the name for the rebrand in 2021.

Bisquick, the all-purpose baking mix used for countless American pancakes, went on sale in which year?

1931: General Mills launched Bisquick after executive Carl Smith met a dining-car chef who kept pre-mixed biscuit dough on ice, ready to bake fresh on the train.

The chemical leavener in a box of pancake mix is a blend of a carbonate or bicarbonate and what?

A weak acid, such as cream of tartar or sodium acid pyrophosphate, reacts with the bicarbonate when the batter is wetted and heated, releasing the carbon dioxide that makes the bubbles.

Which Canadian province is the world's largest producer of maple syrup?

Quebec makes roughly seven-tenths of the world's maple syrup, far ahead of Vermont, the largest US producer, which made about 2.5 million gallons in 2022.

Roughly how many volumes of maple sap must be boiled down to make one volume of syrup?

Between 20 and 50 volumes, about 40 on average, because sugar maple sap is only around two percent sugar; it runs for a few weeks in late winter and early spring.

Thieves in the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist refilled the emptied barrels with what?

Water replaced the syrup in many barrels so the weight looked right; the haul was worth about C$18.7 million and was only noticed when an inspector climbed onto a barrel that was empty.

IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, opened its first restaurant in 1958 where?

California: brothers Al and Jerry Lapin opened the first IHOP in July 1958 in the Toluca Lake area of Los Angeles.

In June 2018, IHOP briefly renamed itself IHOb, with the 'b' standing for what?

Burgers: the IHOb stunt promoted a new line of steakburgers to remind people the chain served lunch and dinner, and the P returned about a month later.

What is a semla, Sweden's traditional Shrove Tuesday treat?

A cream-filled cardamom bun: the semla is a wheat bun spiced with cardamom, filled with almond paste and whipped cream; King Adolf Frederick reputedly died in 1771 after a meal ending with semlor.

Which Jewish festival is traditionally celebrated with potato pancakes called latkes?

Hanukkah is celebrated with latkes, grated potato pancakes fried in oil, recalling the oil that burned for eight days in the rededicated Temple.

Icelandic pönnukökur are cooked on a special pan designed to make the pancake what?

As thin as possible: the special flat pönnukökupanna makes a crêpe-thin pancake, rolled with sugar or folded around whipped cream and jam.

Korean savoury pancakes made from batter and vegetables or seafood are called what?

Buchimgae is the general name for Korean batter pancakes fried with vegetables or seafood; pajeon, the scallion version, is the best known abroad.

What is the traditional running attire required of contestants in the Olney pancake race?

Apron and headscarf are required, with a frying pan in hand; only women of the town may run the 415-yard course from the market place to the church.

Chinese pancakes such as cong you bing differ from Western ones because they are made from what?

"Dough rather than batter": a scallion pancake is a kneaded dough rolled thin, scattered with scallions, coiled and flattened before frying, which gives it flaky layers.

Which jam is the classic filling for Hungarian palacsinta?

Apricot jam, sárgabaracklekvár, is the classic filling for a rolled palacsinta; the savoury Hortobágyi version is filled with meat and topped with paprika sauce.

What is the bowl-shaped fermented rice-flour pancake of Sri Lanka and Kerala called?

A hopper, or appam, is cooked in a small rounded pan so the fermented rice batter sets crisp and lacy at the rim and soft in the middle; an egg hopper has an egg cracked into the bowl.